Apparatus, method and computer-accessible medium for noninvasive determination of electrical properties of tissues and materials

Abstract

Apparatus, method, and computer-accessible medium embodiments for a noninvasive mapping of electrical properties of tissues or materials. For example, it is possible to apply a plurality of stimulations to a target. It is possible to receive at least one signal from the target in response to the applied stimulations. Further, it is possible to process the at least one signal to determine electromagnetic-field-related quantities associated with the stimulations and the target response. Also, it is possible to supply the electromagnetic-field-related quantities to a system of equations relating these quantities to a plurality of electrical property values and residual field-related unknown values of the at least one target. It is also possible to determine a solution to the system of equations, including determining at least one electrical property of the at least one target.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION(S)[0001]This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61 / 420,694, filed on Dec. 7, 2010, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.FIELD OF THE DISCLOSURE[0002]The present disclosure relates to mapping electrical properties of tissues or materials, and more specifically to apparatus, method, and computer-accessible medium for a noninvasive mapping of electrical properties of tissues or materials.BACKGROUND INFORMATION[0003]A prospect of noninvasive mapping of the electrical properties of tissues and materials has long been contemplated by scientists. “Electrical prospection” techniques have a long and rich history, in which a panoply of probes and innovative algorithms have been brought to bear in an attempt to solve the inherently ill-conditioned inverse problem associated with deducing internal electrical property maps from nondestructive external measurements. Despite the intrinsi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present patent describes a method for determining electrical properties of a target by applying a plurality of stimulations to the target and measuring the resulting signals. The method uses a system of equations to relate the signals to the stimulations and the target's response. The method can be used in various applications such as medical diagnosis and material characterization. The stimulations can include injection of a current or generation of an electromagnetic field, and the signals can include information related to the current or field. The method can also involve separating terms and using noise covariance matrices to improve the solution of the system of equations. The technical effects of the patent include improved accuracy and efficiency in determining electrical properties of targets and improved conditioning of the system of equations.

Problems solved by technology

Magnetoencephalography or electrocardiography can track intrinsic electrical activity in the brain or the heart, albeit at coarse spatial resolution; however, these modalities do not provide direct information about the electrical substrate of otherwise passive tissues.

Interactions of electromagnetic fields with the body can distort images obtained with high-field MRI scanners, limiting the practical use of these powerful devices.

All such electrical prospection techniques utilize the solution of ill-posed inverse problems, which carry with them fundamental challenges of robustness, spatial resolution, etc.

These techniques circumvent the fundamental limitations of surface-based inverse problems, but they must contend with the fact that MRI generally provides only partial information about interior currents and fields.

However, EPT suffers from a fundamental lack of access to absolute RF phase, as all measurable phases are expressed in relation to some unknown reference phase distribution.

However, these assumptions generally fail preferentially at high field strength—precisely where field curvature is greatest and electrical property maps would otherwise be expected to be most effective, not to mention most valuable for understanding tissue-field interactions that affect MR image quality and safety.

It is also not known a priori precisely where and how the EPT approximation will break down for any particular body, opening up the possibility of unrecognized errors in property estimation.

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